Burn It Down
by Olivia Twisted
Summary: Young widow Bella is trying to make sense of Jake's death and the arrival of a familiar stranger in her back yard. Sometimes one lifetime is not enough. AH.


I give one guess as to who owns these fine characters. Me? Aw, that's sweet but no. Stephanie Meyers? Ding, Ding, Ding, show the lady what she has won.

Don't make me start checking ID's, you know who you are. Shoo. Before I call your parents on you and show them what you are reading. Shoo.

No this is not edited, if it's really so bad you can't understand it then volunteer to teach me proper English. Or better yet just volunteer to edit for me.

Without further ado, here is some sweet fiction on fiction action, Twisted style.

~BURN IT DOWN~

"Bella? Did you hear me?" I tried to focus on Edwards voice. He recognized the faraway look on my face and repeated himself. "Thank you for dinner. It was delicious. I've never had better meatloaf."

A smile ghosted my lips as I called his bluff. "You don't remember having better, you mean."

He had a thick cloth napkin tucked into a cable knit sweater that would have been better suited someone with a bit huskier build, not that he didn't look excellent as usual. He leaned back in his chair and used his thumbs to push his empty plate away from the edge of my well loved oak table. I had no doubt that he was trying to give me a compliment though, so not to be rude I added, "but, you're still welcome."

"No." He said this with confidence, and I watched with intently as his fingers entwined themselves behind his head. I felt my attention slide into delicious guilt inducing fantasy's of those long beautiful fingers and everything they could do. "I know it was the best." I didn't try to hide my skepticism but I did shake the tasty spider webs from my head. "I do." He confirmed for me. How very simple for him.

I had only known Edward for the very worst part of my life, and yet I wanted him. I must be pushing the limits of my sanity with grief and lack of sleep, but of this I was sure. Having decided that, I got a glimmer of what Edwards current existence must be like, living every experience with the purest of feelings, no memories to color your reactions.

It was a slight out of body experience, in that while looking into his eyes everything seemed so simple when, if I was to turn away from his gaze for a moment, reality was so very complicated. I stood to take our dishes to the sink and his spell was broken and I was left with the pain, the lifetime of memories and the sharp words still echoing in my skull after nine days.

Emmett was the one who had to say it, bless his directness. For an endless moment after I opened my front door to him I stood in the in between, the cold winter air and oven warmed kitchen air passed around me setting my spine aflame as they mingled. Before the sensation could pass I looked at Emmett, and he choked on his words. He closed his eyes to my reaction, just to be able to say it, and now the words were rolling around in my head as endless as ocean waves on a beach.

"I'm so sorry. He's gone Bells"

I never had nerves of steel, even as a child anything sudden or unexpected was bound to affect me. I certainly never expected to become a widow before the age of 25. After that nasty surprise my lack of tears made me think I was broken on the inside somewhere, maybe I was just too tired to react to anything that was unexpected. Like yesterday, I had found a Christmas gift well hidden in the hall closet. I just calmly opened the gift that Jake had obviously paid to have wrapped to find an engraved music box and after playing it once set it on the windowsill and went back to baking. Today I seamlessly went about serving us the mashed potatoes as I realized that I was madly in love with Edward. A stranger who dropped into the shit pile that Jakes death had caused in our town with a dump truck of his own issues. A man who had woken in a Denver hospital with injuries that would have killed or at least crippled a lesser man and no memories to go with them.

With nothing and nobody to turn to, he had allowed his doctor, my neighbor Carlisle, to bring him home, help him recover and as strange as it seems, to name him. From what Dr. Cullen had told me, his wife Esme had read from an old list of baby names until they got to the E section and he told her Edward felt right.

What a way to live, apart from his dependence and trust in the kindness of those around him, Edward and myself to a point, were using the most simple survival concept. Does this feel right? Yes. Take one step forward. Does this feel wrong? Yes. Then stop, look for another direction. Seven days ago I could never have thought of this concept as a positive, but seven days can change everything just as easily as seven seconds or seven years can, and seven days ago I met Edward.

I had been sitting on the back porch with bare feet on the cold dead ground, with one hand on the folded funeral flag in my lap and the other hand on autopilot with a cigarette. I turned at the sound of the Cullen's back door closing. Our homes were only separated by a strip of now brown grass and a low white fence. A stranger cocked his head at me and walked over to the waist high gate we had agreed to add last spring. The stranger was too tall for his pants and too thin for the flannel shirt that I recognized as Carlisle's. A healing cut and bruise ran from cheek to a shaggy head of the loveliest hair and gave him a slightly drooping sinister eyebrow.

"Hello," he carefully and slowly said the word as if he may frighten me away. "May I have a cigarette?" When a battered stranger comes out of the neighbor's house, wearing said neighbors clothes and you know for a fact said neighbor has no children or relatives similar to this man, the sane reaction is to deny him, move inside and lock the door.

"Yes." I spoke just as carefully as he had, and I held out the pack and matchbook to him. He accepted them but stayed standing in front of me, blocking my eyes from the glare of the setting sun. Although he was in shadow, his eyes held none of the pity I had become accustomed to from everyone I knew. His beautiful features just had the normal curiosity of meeting a stranger for the first time.

"Who are you?" I was still speaking slowly, thinking at any moment something dramatic was going to happen. His only reaction though, was an odd second of thought, before smiling like I was amusing somehow.

"That's complicated." Still grinning down at me.

"No." I told him. "It's really not," I decided to give him an example; "I'm Bella Black. And you are?"

"I'm Edward. Last name yet to be determined." He lowered himself to the porch gracefully, and I shifted just my eyes to look at him. The statement sat between us on the porch, waiting anxiously to be acknowledged.

I refused to break down and ask. I was a very patient person. Seeing how I couldn't work an hour without anyone speaking in, what they probably thought was a comforting tone I would never bring myself to ask for his story afraid that my voice would come out heavy with emotion either good or bad.

He left the cigarette in his mouth and took a deep drag and exhaling, he closed his eyes, slumped against the decorative column of my porch, the picture of relief. His features relaxed and where before he had been merely handsome, relaxed he was perfection. He removed the cigarette and proceeded to explain how he had awakened in a hospital not being able to answer any questions about who he was or where he had come from. According to what Carlisle told him he had been found beaten nearly to death in a less than desirable motel on Colfax Avenue. After spending eight days in a coma, two weeks undergoing tests and four more weeks in therapy he was released from the hospital. Carlisle and Esme had asked him to come to their home instead of a halfway house while he got back on his feet. Apparently they both felt that despite how he was found; he was a good man they could easily help him with whatever was thrown his way.

Suddenly he opened his eyes and looked at the flag in my lap. His eyes closed tightly again. He opened them just barely and simply said softly, "I'm sorry." It was, simply the truest apology I had received from anyone since Emmet and Jasper had arrived with their wives on my doorstep.

When they had said "I'm sorry" I knew immediately what they meant. It was like walking on what you thought was solid ground to suddenly find there was nothing holding you up and the only thing below you was a cold roaring ocean. They never actually said the word _dead_, and I didn't need them to, they would have no reason to be here, to be _sorry_, to bring their wives if Jake was simply in the hospital.

I had never been a morning person, taking a long time to pull myself from my dreams and often, when he was called away to a fire in the morning, I would never remember him rousing me to say goodbye just awaking in an empty bed knowing that he was off being a hero for some other family at the moment.

For some amount of time that morning I sat with the members of our extended family in silence, trying to wrap my head around the concept that that last goodbye I couldn't remember would be our last moment ever. After a bit, I decided that no amount of thinking was going to make me understand. So I stood up and went about taking care of my cafe and planning my husband's funeral.

From the 'I'm sorry' on my front porch that sent me over the proverbial cliff and into the ocean, to the same words Edward just said on my back porch, everyone else's words were nothing but a ringing in my ears, tainted, making me think more of them and what they had to be thinking, than of myself or Jake.

For the first time since he sat next to me I turned and looked Edward strait in the eyes "Thank you." I accepted his apology then shivered. Before this moment I had not felt the deep cold of the frostbitten ground seeping into the bare skin of my feet or the chilly wind on my unprotected arms.

I excused myself and went inside. I put the flag next to our family portrait over the yet unused fireplace. I had no idea when I had eaten my last meal, but I passed by the refrigerator ignoring my hunger, down the hallway to the only place where I could find in my lovely home not permeated by the smell and heat and love that was my Jacob. I pulled the shower curtain back and reveled in the burning smell of bleach before I assumed the fetal position on the floor of the empty bathtub.

I felt the grief rise, a wild animal tearing at my chest to get out, and with a feral scream in the crook of my arm I gave in and let it tear me to shreds. Once that emotion was released there was no way to control it. To me, these sounds were whispers when compared to the replay of our happy life that was taunting me. My own howling chorused with the unending growl of his voice in my head, his unique way of exclaiming all events both important and inane that would never be captured and could never be wiped from my suddenly flaming soul.

I sat her cigarettes and matches on the rather feminine desk of the Cullens office that was currently serving as my bedroom and flinched when I heard the first screaming wail. I may have thought of calling Carlisle for an instant but changed my mind, this was no cry of physical pain. I went to the window and peered across the space separating me from her house. I leaned my weight on the wall, taking the pressure off my bad side and let my face touch the cold glass that was now fogged from my breath. I didn't know much. I did know the girl on the other side of the fence had been drained, and that more than anything I wanted her not to hurt anymore now, or ever. I wanted to hold her, to comfort her but the small foreign voice in my head that was talking to me, guiding me told me to let her be, for now. So I sat staring at the darkness and listened to her burn.

I didn't hear Edward come up behind me at the sink. The only sound in the kitchen was the running of water as I rinsed suds from our plates before I set them in the drying rack. I reached to turn off the water and in the instant my hand meandered on the knob; Edward reached from behind me and snatched it in his own. I let a sound out like an old barn door and Edward laughed. The sound, this most natural sound, drove me to forget my shock and giggle along with him. I was opening my mouth to tell him how he must have had some sort of ninja training in his previous life when he pulled our joined hands across my body to where his mouth was hovering just over my right shoulder. His smell hit me at the same time as his lips touched to inside of my wrist. The skin there was already flushed from the heat of the dishwater and it stretched tight over bones and veins and tendons as it arched into his kiss. His lips felt cool and firm to my flesh despite it feeling as though they sent an injection of heat to the rest of my body. It was as if he had put some sort of delicious poison in my veins, with every new beat of my heart every cell of my body was infected.

Trying to keep as much contact between the two of us as possible, I twisted in his embrace, pulling my hand free only to place it at his neck grasping at slightly overgrown, baby soft locks. I assaulted his mouth with mine. I wanted to spread this sickness that he had infected me with in a single contact back to him. I wanted him to feel the chill and the burning and the fullness that he had given me. There was nothing like this. I had started the kiss so deep and forceful that there was nothing either of us could do but yield to its demands. He may have started this at my wrist, I may have brought it to his mouth, but it was now its own entity involving everything it wanted. Demanding, needy, knowing nothing but force and frantic movement dancing tongues, the tiniest click of teeth, my bite on his lip, his invasion of my mouth. The kiss was a part of the burning and the burning was good. It demanded every infected cell participate; ears, eyes, fingertips, palms, hands, wrists, feet, calves, knees, hips, pelvis all united in this kiss, this beautiful fiery dance.

I knew as he surely did the cure for this mutual sickness. My hands worked their way below his sweater and t-shirt and his skin on my palms was a relief. His own hands were busy on separate tasks. One wrapped itself in my ponytail, guiding my head to his exact wishes; the other both clutched at my breast and tried to undo the buttons of my flannel shirt. As much as my legs begged to latch themselves around his hips, but first I forced them to move us to a better location. I walked Edward back until he collided with the table; he sat heavily and spread his legs to make room for me. I peeled both of his shirts completely off, not taking time to visually adore his chest, instead choosing to learn by touch. Edwards's talented hand had found all the necessary buttons and he pushed the shirt away from my shoulders. It stayed at my elbows as my hands were unwilling to stop grasping at his hair and exploring from his broad shoulders to his defined abs. When I touched the top of his blue jeans he let out a shaky breath, it was hard to tell, but my name may have passed his lips.

Deciding he had been at my mercy long enough he stood and spun me around, the table hitting the back of my legs hard enough to leave a mark that I hoped would last. I wiggled my hips so I was sitting all the way on the table and that motion gave Edward ample room to grasp at the waste of my khakis and pull them to my ankles in one motion, not even needing to unbutton them thanks to my recent weight loss. He bent foreword to kiss the valley between my wonder bra enhanced breasts, my stomach, my panty covered clit continued to kneel and remove my pants and looked up at me.

I took the time to admire him while he was out of reach but not wanting to waste a moment; I unclasped my bra and flung it to the side. His normally golden eyes narrowed to slits taking an almost greenish hue and he made his way back up my body. He leaned on an elbow, his hand removed my hair tie and his fingers explored my scalp as I leaned back and wrapped my legs around him. He explored my breasts with his teeth and tongue and talented fingers, rolling hard nipples and licking the swell where breast met heaving lungs. I unfastened the copper buttons that were currently keeping me from the treasure at the end of his very happy trail, I pushed his Levis off as much as I could with him restricting my movements in the best possible way.

He used his bare feet to pull at one cuff of his pant leg, then the other, working them off without breaking contact. His task complete, he now let me lay completely back on the table as he pulled himself from the hold my legs had on him in order to grasp my cotton and lace panties at the hips and slide them down my thankfully shaved legs. He then repeated the process with his own boxer briefs and then we were naked and still. My eyes took in the sight before me, light skin with pink healing scars, unruly hair a five o'clock shadow, muscles that had swiftly returned with a few weeks of manual labor, a smattering of hair and a perfect looking erect cock. I bit my lip lightly. Edward was beautiful. I looked into his eyes for the first time since dinner, and he held my gaze. My own sureness was juxtaposed by the expression on Edwards face. He was innocent. His eyes burned with passion and need but they also held the look I had not seen since Tyler Murphy and I decided to lose our virginity together the night of high school graduation. Edward was, in some small way, a virgin. He was reacting solely on what I had lead him to do and he looked happy with that plan of action so I continued to guide him, I grabbed his larger hand in mine and guided them both to my slit that was already wet with wanting him. I wrapped my fingers around his thumb and glided it up gathering wetness to my clit then used it to tease myself into a frenzy. He took some initiative and dipped two fingers into me slowly; I arched into him, releasing my hold on his thumb in order to grab the edge of the table for support. I was close, my heart and walls clenching at a stuttering rhythm, but I wanted him to be with me in this moment. I let my free hand pull Edwards face closer to mine. His jaw under my hand was clenching his teeth grinding in rhythm to the slow thrusts of his fingers. Our breath mingled and I noted that his eyes had changed yet again and were now a darker green, and held a look, almost familiar, no longer virginal but sure and knowing.

He removed his fingers from me and pulled my hips up aligning me to his taller frame. Still needing more height and not wanting his hands to be busy holding me I pulled both feet onto the edge of the table and arched up to him. I clutched his hip with one hand and the other he held by my head his talented thumb finding my second favorite spot, just below my ear. He guided the head of his beautiful cock inside of me slowly then stopped. He looked into my eyes and must have liked what he saw because his hips arched foreword swiftly and he stretched me in the most surprising and wonderful way. He paused for a second and the hand that was not busy leaving nail marks on Edwards ass shot out searching for the other end of the table needing something solid to anchor myself to. On the way there I collided with the napkin holder and it hit the floor with a solid clatter. Edward repeated the same movement he had before, slow, slow entry then slamming home, this time even harder now that he had been adequately lubricated. I think the words fuck, and oh god may have left my mouth in some order, but he correctly assumed they were encouragement and soldiered on.

I thought myself foolish for thinking a moment ago thinking of Edward as a virgin. If he could not remember this act then he had some guardian angel guiding him, he hit the right spots at the right time, keeping a steady pattern of thrusts and trailing his fingers that were not stroking my face in a circuit over my neck, breasts, clit and hip. After his fourth or maybe fifth lap I felt the muscles everywhere in my body become uncontrolled and the thoughts trickled out of my brain as I turned my head and bit down on Edwards hand, wanting to mark him, wanting to give us both something to remember the moment by.

Edward continued his thrusts thru my climax and when I felt that my voice would be steady again I moved my hand from his hip back to his jaw. His eyes were clouded unfocused and glassy he almost looked like he was in a painful trance.

"Edward?" I said quietly. His eyes locked on mine and I struggled to reach up and touch his face. "Edward." I said his name again and with that, he straitened to his full height arched his back and with my hand now on his chest he took three quick hard thrusts and came inside of me with a grunt before falling forward and reclaiming my mouth.

Now that I no longer needed an anchor, I wrapped myself around him arms and legs holding him close, his kissing and breathing suddenly loud in my cozy kitchen. I closed my eyes and felt Edward remove himself from me for a moment before grasping me along my thighs and lifting me so my heavy head was on his shoulder he carried me to my bedroom. My bed was unmade as usual and he laid me down.

I refused to let him away for long and demanded, not requested that he stay. He was only away from me for a second and returned wearing his boxer briefs with my underwear in his hand. I felt like a fool as he refused to let me put them on myself instead, doing his earlier movements in reverse, ending with another kiss to my panty covered clit. He moved in the bed behind me spooning my back to him and tucking my head below his chin. His hand covered my stomach and he sang me a sleepy tune

If it takes forever, I will wait for you

For a thousand summers, I will wait for you

Till you're back beside me, till I'm holding you

Till I hear you sigh here in my arms….

He started humming and trailed off into sleep. My heart hammered in my chest and my tears fell to the pillow as I continued humming my favorite song. A song I had heard only yesterday playing from the simple music box Jake had bought for me. I whispered the last line out loud.

…And forevermore… I will wait for you.

**It's been fun, don't go leaving me with writers blue balls, send some love.**

**Olivia Twisted**


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